NANTWICH and South Cheshire Show organisers say this year’s event was one of the best attended for years with more than 30,000 visitors flooding through the gates.

Show joint secretary Adrian Lawrence was delighted with the turnout – and pleased the occasional downpour didn’t dampen the spirits of the visitors.

“We’ve had a fantastic show. It’s a pity it started to rain at midday for a while but it’s the biggest crowd we’ve had for many years and it went very well,” said Adrian.

“We know that we’ve had more people here than we’ve had for some years without a doubt.”

Last year the show attracted 27,500 visitors.

This year’s gate shows its pulling power is increasing.

“It just shows people are very keen on coming to the show,” said Adrian. “ It is a good show. We like to think so and hopefully the public do as well.”

Records were smashed again with entries in a number of sections up on last year.

Adrian said: “The cheese has got fantastic entries with 3,230 entrants – that’s up 17% on last year. There was a record number of cattle exhibitors, a record number of trade stands and all of a fantastic standard so we’re very pleased.”

Plans for next year’s show are already under way.

“It’s more than 12 months to plan and we’ve already got things in place for next year,” says Adrian. “As of today we’ve got new ideas.”

As well as the exhibiting categories, the show featured dance from the UK’s leading junior dancers, AJ Pritchard and Chloe Hewitt, both 15.

Celebrity chef Richard Fox was cooking up a treat in the Cheshire East Pavilion as part of the council’s Love Food, Hate Waste campaign and actor John Pickard, of Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks, was signing autographs after judging the winner of the Cheese Lovers’ Trophy.